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Chapter 42: Fred feels deeply ashamed

Fred spent the night writhing about in deep discomfort. He found his mind filled with the lewd pictures he had seen and they troubled him. In his dreams, he saw Bessie again, dancing like the girls in the Folies, staring at him insolently, taking off her drawers and waving them at him, smiling and beckoning to him to join her. Then he disappeared after her into some dark, strange place where he felt lost and afraid and struggled to awake himself from the suffocation of it all.

He now regretted having come to Paris with Oldham. He felt the meeting with Marillon had somehow degraded him, filling his hitherto clear mind with terrible thoughts. He could never have imagined such things in a hundred years! Now it was a contamination; pictures and emotions he would never ever be able to erase from his memory. He politely told Oldham next morning that he would return to England that day as there was little in Paris to interest him after all.